You've misrepresented a few things he's said.
When the invasion broke out in February 2022, Ukraine was receiving negligible support from the west. At that time it was a reasonable thing to say that eventually Ukraine would lose by attrition.
What changed since he made that statement is that western support has ramped up massively.
Ukraine's defence budget has went from $5b in 2021 to $50b in 2023. The shipments of modern and powerful weapons to Ukraine is unprecedented in modern times.
To be fair I reckon most people who use that description don't realise how much it annoyed the countries in question. It was just the way that they were often described in certain countries. Nobody meant any disrespect by it - a bit like people calling Ukraine "the Ukraine" which is pretty rare nowadays but was extremely common a decade ago. Directives like this from the AP will help with that.
Sure, that Ukraine does not have enough airpower has been pretty common knowledge since almost the beginning. Inequality between different army's throughout history has been a problem for the warring Generals to solve. Same as Ukrainian Military are doing now. There was a quote from some US General recently, which describes it perfectly:- " You fight the war with the Army you have, not the Army you wish you had." Very true!!!
Time will tell. You have to weigh the amount of materiel they have against the rate of attrition. By all accounts they are getting stretched but nobody seems to know for sure. Give it 4 to 6 weeks...
The Austrian colonels comment section on YouTube is awash with overly eager fans whose comments are eerily similar to the comments you see on Mick Wallace and Clare Daly's scutter rants in the EU parliament. Go have a look and compare.
Cluster munitions a game changer ?
No
Disappointing….
Very, very little is going to be a "game changer" at this stage unfortunately.
Vast quantities of ATACMS or fleets of planes notwithstanding, everything else it more about incremental gains.
I disagree.
They will work great against well dug in infantry.
Sure, they will help.
Russia has been using them since the start. They are not going to be a "game-changer" by any reasonable definition of the phrase.
For sure they will work very well over a concentrated area. I saw what one of them did that landed in a street in NIS in Serbia during the NATO bombing. It caused massive damage up and down both sides of the street. You can add to the damage what the un exploded ones do when they. they get triggered. BTW, Chinese and Russian Cluster Munitions have the highest failure rate IE: Most lethal.
Where does that leave the current trajectory of the war?
If Russia is getting weaker through attrition and sanctions and Ukraine is getting stronger with shipments of modern and powerful weapons unprecedented in modern times, the outcome is clear. Russia is only delaying the inevitable and costing innocent lives, by continuing the conflict.
I see Russia have another war crime primed and waiting.
This time it's explosives on the roof of the Power Unit No.4 at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
This will cause worse devastation than Chernobyl did.
I would not be too sure about that...when these power stations were built, they were built to withstand an external nuclear blast. And conversely (unlike Chernobyl,) to withstand the force of a reactor blowing up inside the containment building too. None the less, Its not something that I'd like to put to the test. When you think that the dam that was blown up, was only meant to sustain a very small amount of damage,,,,a kind of warning if you like,
The unexploded ones are a problem for advancing infantry though.
And kids and farmers in years to come. I think it would be questionable if they'd be a good idea in the grand scheme of things if Russia wasn't using them anyway and the place wasn't littered in mines.
For sure it's not malevolent though there's a question as to how much of this flippant throwing of eastern Europe to the Russian wolves by the Mick Wallace types is formed from a preconception or bias that by default they have more cultural relevance with Moscow than Berlin. Easy to Whatabout NATO when your presumption dismissed these countries as worthless satellites to Muscovite influence from the offset. I've often found the strong whiff of Western hubris in these types, never seemingly concerned with Ukraine or the actual countries themselves.
Worst case scenario has already been provided for by experts and in that scenario we're nowhere near a Chernobyl level event.
Would be great to hear how you came to the opposite conclusion.
The media have been all over this like a fly to ****. Idiots like us love a catastrophe and that is exactly why they're sharing images with white dots as potential mines. It was only earlier today that the planet labs images had nothing on the roofs of the reactors.
Either way, if you think a Chernobyl level event is possible due to a few explosions on the roof of a reactor built for such a thing then you're clueless. I'm clueless too, but I just had to read a bit...
Lukashenko says Putin “won’t whack” Prigozhin 😂 (Sky News)
Well now we know that Prigo’s days are numbered lol
The only concern in what you have described is an internal issue for Russia. It doesn't matter how many men or machinery they pull from said motherland if the Ukrainians can't get close enough to see it.
Thread on those items on the roof:
Also, should the worst come to pass and any explosives go off it'll be nothing like a Chernobyl event:
Well they still have the T34s.
Doesn't make much sense planting explosives that are bright white to the skys above either. They look like seagulls but they don't seem to roam those parts according to Google. Lucky enough for the Ukrainians, the seagulls here are ruthless.
So you think they're moving them into Ukraine for the craic so ?
Not because they're struggling to contain things as they are ?
That wasn't your original point though. Your point was on the front, in response to the point that Gatling made that the front isn't moving the right way nearly far enough for the expense of the bodies being lost.
We can talk about this thing rationally without having to take our Ukrainian face paint off, don't worry.
That isn't what I said at all. Just agreeing that the counteroffensive isn't going as well as planned, which the Ukrainians and US also state. The entrenched lines being refortified from within Russia means nothing for now, unless from the potential uprisers within.
Good question and I wish I knew. Either there's an awful lot of coordination going on that we know nothing about or Prig is on a suicide mission. How Lukashenko fits into it all I don't know. It gets murkier all the time
That's very very unlikely and certainly not from explosives on the roof. Chernobyl was a very specific event that is impossible to recreate in reactors nowadays.
At 3:36 pm on Saturday 12, there was a hydrogen explosion on the service floor of the building above unit 1 reactor containment, blowing off the roof and cladding on the top part of the building, after the hydrogen mixed with air and ignited.
...
There is some dispute among experts about the character of this second explosion, but it is likely to have been caused by the production of hydrogen from zirconium-steam reactions.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx
Didn't fail in the same way per se but lookit, reactors can still fail and spew out radioactive material. They could also sabotage any number of safety and failsafe systems to engineer a disaster.
How are people able to determine the offensive isn't going as planned? From the outset the Ukrainian officials have said it would be slow and little more.
Only the media and commentators have been bigging it up for clicks.
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